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Active IQ Unified Manager 9.9
9.9
A newer release of this product is available.

Adding clusters

Contributors

You can add a cluster to Active IQ Unified Manager so that you can monitor the cluster. This includes the ability to obtain cluster information such as the health, capacity, performance, and configuration of the cluster so that you can find and resolve any issues that might occur.

Before you begin

  • You must have the Application Administrator role or the Storage Administrator role.

  • You must have the host name or cluster management IP address (IPv4 or IPv6) for the cluster.

    When using the host name, it must resolve to the cluster management IP address for the cluster management LIF. If you use a node management LIF, the operation fails.

  • You must have the user name and password to access the cluster.

    This account must have the admin role with Application access set to ontapi, ssh, and http.

  • You must know the port number to connect to the cluster using the HTTPS protocol (typically port 443).

  • The cluster must be running ONTAP version 9.1 software or greater.

  • You must have adequate space on the Unified Manager server. You are prevented from adding a cluster to the server when greater than 90% of space is already consumed.

  • You have the required certificates. Two types of certificates are required:

    Server certificates: Used for registration. A valid certificate is required for adding a cluster. If the server certificate expires, you should regenerate it and restart Unified Manager for the services to be automatically registered again. For information about certificate generation, see the knowledge base (KB) article: How to renew an SSL certificate in ONTAP 9

    Client certificates: Used for authentication. A valid certificate is required for adding a cluster. You cannot add a cluster to Unified Manager with an expired certificate and if the client certificate has already expired, you should regenerate it before adding the cluster. However, if this certificate expires for a cluster that is already added, and is being used by Unified Manager, EMS messaging continues to function with the expired certificate. You do not need to regenerate the client certificate.

Note

You can add clusters which are behind a NAT/firewall by using the Unified Manager NAT IP address. Any connected Workflow Automation or SnapProtect systems must also be behind the NAT/firewall, and SnapProtect API calls must use the NAT IP address to identify the cluster.

About this task

  • Each cluster in a MetroCluster configuration must be added separately.

  • A single instance of Unified Manager can support a specific number of nodes. If you need to monitor an environment that exceeds the supported node count, you must install an additional instance of Unified Manager to monitor some of the clusters.

  • You can monitor a single cluster by two instances of Unified Manager provided that you have configured a second cluster-management LIF on the cluster so that each instance of Unified Manager connects through a different LIF.

Steps

  1. In the left navigation pane, click Storage Management > Cluster Setup.

  2. On the Cluster Setup page, click Add.

  3. In the Add Cluster dialog box, specify the values as required, and then click Submit.

  4. In the Authorize Host dialog box, click View Certificate to view the certificate information about the cluster.

  5. Click Yes.

    Unified Manager checks the certificate only when the cluster is added initially. Unified Manager does not check the certificate for each API call to ONTAP.

Results

After all the objects for a new cluster are discovered (about 15 minutes), Unified Manager starts to gather historical performance data for the previous 15 days. These statistics are collected using the data continuity collection functionality. This feature provides you with over two weeks of performance information for a cluster immediately after it is added. After the data continuity collection cycle is completed, real-time cluster performance data is collected, by default, every five minutes.

Note

Because the collection of 15 days of performance data is CPU intensive, it is suggested that you stagger the addition of new clusters so that data continuity collection polls are not running on too many clusters at the same time. Additionally, if you restart Unified Manager during the data continuity collection period, the collection will be halted and you will see gaps in the performance charts for the missing timeframe.

Tip

If you receive an error message that you cannot add the cluster, check to see if the following issues exist:

  • If the clocks on the two systems are not synchronized and the Unified Manager HTTPS certificate start date is later than the date on the cluster. You must ensure that the clocks are synchronized using NTP or a similar service.

  • If the cluster has reached the maximum number of EMS notification destinations the Unified Manager address cannot be added. By default only 20 EMS notification destinations can be defined on the cluster.